Prisoner, page 61
part #2 of The Contractors Series
At least he wasn’t cold. Everyone else—sleeping head-to-toe, shoulder-to-shoulder on the dirt floor around him—seemed to be constantly shivering.
Daniel blinked his eyes a few times, giving his surroundings a bleary but cautious once-over. His immediate neighbor was, thankfully, an undine. He’d ended up beside a troll the day before, and the smell alone was enough to keep him up half the night. The smells were starting to fade, though. Three straight days of sweat, grime, piss, and body odor would murder anyone’s sense of smell.
There were no blankets, no beds, no pillows, and no privacy. Well, except for the one corner, where the members of the gang assigned to his tunnel slept, but Daniel kept as far from them as possible. The rest of the place was a low-roofed, ice-walled shack with a hole dug in one corner for the ugly business. His tunnel mates at least had the decency to keep the number two buried under the scraps of ice and rock they could find, but the dried urine was, unfortunately, as pervasive as the snores.
Daniel closed his eyes to it all, trying for a few more scant snatches of sleep—something that came hard to him already, being a contractor—but he couldn’t ignore his stomach. It gurgled, growled, clenched. It felt like he had a cramp in his abdomen, and the lingering sting of heartburn sat in his throat. He hadn’t eaten in three days. His stomach had gone on strike from the lack of food, and, without a solid paycheck, settled on eating itself.
Only the slaver cabal—Mining Group 3—ate well down here, normal food brought down from higher levels of Hell. The gang members ate better, too, being not quite Group members but their unofficial muscle—simple fare like bread, soups that actually had spices, occasional bits of meat. The miners—slaves by any other name—got a bland, mushy gruel, if they were lucky enough to bring in enough of a haul to afford PrisonWatch’s draconian price schemes. And if the gang didn’t skim too much in exchange for avoiding a beating. And if the Mining Group’s taxes didn’t take what was left.
A cruel but practical mind might argue that well-fed slaves did a better job with less hassle, but the harsh conditions of the Crystal Mines didn’t impact productivity. Or, maybe they did, and the Group just didn’t care. Hell’s magic kept you alive, with or without food, but it didn’t take away the hunger. The hunger gnawed at them, all of them, and it was fiercer motivation than the sting of a whip.
That being said, whips applied liberally. Daniel had been whipped on his first day—well, not so much whipped at beaten with wooden rods. He’d been slow to wake up, not used to the schedule, but he felt he’d been picked on for being the new guy in his unit. It was a reminder to the rest that the hunger didn’t have to be the end of it if they acted out.
Daniel didn’t linger on the memory, because his mouth was watering at the thought of food, of eating something, anything. He swallowed down tasteless saliva as his thoughts drifted to the lasagna he’d made for himself and Jack. There’d been so much left, all wrapped in foil and tucked away in Jack’s fridge. He’d suck Rasputin’s dick for a bite of that lasagna.
A sharp whistle jolted him from his reverie and the demons around him from his sleep. He bolted upright, then scrambled to his feet, hopping in line with the others who were just as quick to get up. The demons pressed around him as they made for the entrance of the long sleeping quarters. The gang members were already at the doors, rods and truncheons in hand, shouting and swearing at the passing miners.
“Let’s go, let’s go! Like you give a damn!”
“Get those feet moving! PrisonWatch ain’t keeping the tunnels open all day!”
“Come on, don’t slow everyone down! Move it!”
“First one back with a crystal gets half fees today! Word comes straight from the Group!”
There were some murmurs at that, exchanged glances. Daniel felt his motivation draw as tight as a stone sliding down a steel blade. Half fees meant that, with the right mana crystal, you could get enough points to eat well for a week. In practice, you’d have to share with the gang. They could just beat you and take everything if you didn’t. But all said, it was a lot better than not eating.
Daniel kept his head low as he went out the entrance. After the first day, he wanted to keep a low profile. He got shoved between a minotaur and the icy wall of the shack on the way out; he turned sideways to squeeze out onto the open path.
Daniel broke free of the press of bodies. Just as he was past the doors, a rod fell flat on his shoulder. Daniel froze.
“Hey there, human.” Daniel’s eyes followed the rod up to the blood-red hand holding it, then up to the devil that was grinning at him. His teeth were crowded into points like a shark; his face was flat, except for a twisted, ribbed patch of flesh where a nose should be. A huge, mottle-skinned orc stood at his shoulder, patting a truncheon in its open palm.
“Settling in alright?” the devil asked. “Any complaints about the accommodations?” Daniel shook his head. “Oh, that’s good. Good. You seem quiet, though. I remember you saying something about ugly faces and ripped off noses a few days ago.”
“Yeah, man,” Daniel said. He edged back from the rod, letting it slide off his shoulder. “Those undines, ugly fish-faced jerks. Sardine smell. Yuck.”
The devil let Daniel slide off for the first moment, then lifted the rod and jammed the tip at Daniel’s face, catching his cheek. Daniel couldn’t move back because of the rush of bodies behind him. The devil pushed the rod in, stretching his mouth into a lopsided smirk.
“Wow. What a joker. You oughta smile more.” The devil pushed the rod harder, until Daniel’s teeth were aching from it pressing into his face. “Come on. Smile.”
“Kinda busy sucking on your pole,” Daniel said, words muffled by the rod that was jammed in his face.
“The laughs just keep rolling with you. Keep ‘em coming, I got all day.”
Daniel, seeing an opening in the crowd, batted away the rod and ducked across the path. He pitched his voice, shrieking above the sound of footsteps and morning chatter. “I know you have a human fetish, but your tiny tool doesn’t do anything for me! It could never work between us!”
The other demons—miners and gang members—that had been not-so-subtly watching the show burst into laughter. The orc bawled in big, heaving growls, patting its oversized belly. The devil snarled at the surrounding miners. “The hell are you all looking at? Get down there before I make you!” That cut off the laughter quickly. Daniel heard the devil’s voice echoing over them. “You’ll be back around later, human, and we’ll see how hard you’re laughing then!”
Daniel slowed his jog back to a steady trot when he saw the devil wasn’t making any move to go after him. He’d moved back to the front of the pack, now, heading down the path out from the town and toward the cliffs, and their tunnel.
The devil’s words rung in his ears. Daniel would return to the shack later that day—or whatever passed for time in this place, with no sun to tell. He had nowhere else to go. He’d probably pay for the smartass performance several times over.
But it was worth the price. He’d been beaten quite a few times since coming down to Hell. What was one more beating? He had to keep himself sane, somehow.
There was a darkness lingering in the back of his mind. Bitterness over how he’d fallen, a thirst for something with a sharper edge than simple justice—cold vengeance and punishing recompense. But below that shallow, moment-to-moment anger, there was something worse; a slinking, creeping despair, waiting to swallow him whole as soon as he let it.
With all else stripped away, at least he could still crack a joke. His pathetic attempts at humoring himself prodded at the darkness like a starving man poked a bear to steal a lick of honey. It was a fool’s errand, his likely reward swift disembowelment, but it was the only game in town.
But despite the hunger, the pain in his joints, and the looming threat of an afternoon beating, Daniel had a skip in his step he’d lacked the past two days. He’d worked hard yesterday, and he was confident his efforts were going to pay off—just in time to get half off his taxes. Today—definitely, positively today—was going to be the day he brought home a mana crystal.
Andrew Ball, Prisoner
